Why is unhappiness a good thing? You’ll have heard it from countless people if you’re listening: this illness was the best thing that ever happened to me; this tragedy opened my eyes; this disaster taught me how to enjoy my life. It happened to me so I know it’s true, but that doesn’t mean I

The year is ending in the UK. We are 3 weeks away from the shortest day and the shortest day seems so short! Maybe 6 hours of daylight. I miss the sun. I love the sun. But I remind myself to be grateful for the shelter I have, the great roof of my house, the

The best places in our world are places where people are poor. Ok there’s nothing wonderful about poverty, except the fact that you are forced to work with the richness of nature which feeds you in the way no amount of money ever can. Those of us who have enough money to survive have the

‘Why do we need to know this?’ It’s the perennial moan you hear from kids at school who can’t see the relevance to their own lives of some subject they are learning at school. Adults always tell them that one day they will need to calculate how much paint they need to decorate a room

Isn’t it true that you learn more when you’re having fun? Trying too hard gets in the way. It’s the shock discoveries that suddenly pop into your mind when you’re letting go, defences down, unprepared to defend yourself with your conviction of what reality is. So Transformation Toyshops would be a better word for getting

The remarkable truth is that your body has a language and it is communicating with you all the time. Most of us have learned not to listen to our body’s innate intelligence, considering other parts of our intelligence more ‘important.’ But this innate intelligence, the so called autonomic functioning of you as a living

‘Intolerable it is not to be in contact with God and therefore when I’m not writing I’m extremely unhappy.’ British musician and composer, John Taverner, who died last year, said this. For him, composing music was a conversation with God. I believe that this is why any of us do what we do. If a

Driving through London on the weekend, I watched a couple of girls on the pavement as I waited for the lights to change. They looked like they were hanging around waiting for something cool to do. They had that special pent-up energy about them peculiar to fourteen or fifteen year olds. One had a cap

‘You don’t know all of you, but all of you knows you.’ Harry Uhane Jim, Hawaiian philosopher and teacher Most people who have a problem with their body, make the doctor their first port of call. Soon after that, if the problem is serious, they find themselves in a hospital, and very soon, they have